thronging
procession, steps gradually backward, curtsying and bowing, and
spreading her hands to her guests, after the manner of my Lord
Chamberlain.

Eight colored musicians, (everything is colored here,) perched on a
raised platform covered with maroon-colored plush, at the signal of a
lusty-tongued call-master, strike up a march, to which the motley throng
attempt to keep time. It is martial enough; and discordant enough for
anything but keeping time to.

The plush-covered benches filing along the sides and ends of the hall
are eagerly sought after and occupied by a strange mixture of lookers on
in Vienna. Here the hoary-headed father sits beside a newly-initiated
youth who is receiving his first lesson of dissipation. There the grave
and chivalric planter sports with the nice young man, who is cultivating
a beard and his way into the by-ways. A little further on the suspicious
looking gambler sits freely conversing with the man whom a degrading
public opinion has raised to the dignity of the judicial bench. Yonder
is seen the man who has eaten his way into fashionable society, (and by
fashionable society very much caressed in return,) the bosom companion
of the man whose crimes have made him an outcast.

Generous reader! contemplate this grotesque assembly; study the object
Madame Flamingo has in gathering it to her fold. Does it not present the
accessories to wrong doing? Does it not show that the wrong-doer and the
criminally inclined, too often receive encouragement by the example of
those whoso duty it is to protect society? The spread of crime, alas!
for the profession, is too often regarded by the lawyer as rather a
desirable means of increasing his trade.

Quadrille follows quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the scene
presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating
bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling
seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in
the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of
the young,--the child who stood trembling between the first and second
downward step finds her reeling brain a captive in this snare set to
seal her ruin.

Now the music ceases, the lusty-tongued call-master stands surveying
what he is pleased to call the oriental splendor of this grotesque
assembly. He doesn't know who wouldn't patronize such a house! It
suddenly forms in platoon, and marshalled by slightly